One Silver Coin For a Pound of Demon

Chapter 38

Draft
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The ground is shaking.

Your body is shaken gently, and your ears are full of clang clang sounds. When you opened your eyes with difficulty, you saw brown iron.

Light shines through the window, and you blink dully, lifting the coat that's over you. It's not the ground that's shaking, you're inside a rickety car and the wheels are running over the gravel, you bump along with it. A cool breeze blows in from an unknown crevice, making your drowsy mind slightly awake.

For a moment you don't know what time it is or where you are, like when you woke up from that hospital so many years ago. You slowly sit up and look out the window, the wasteland is endless.

"Are you awake?" Lemuel's voice comes from the front seat, full of joy.

You finally remember the scene before the darkness, and the void accompanied by pain seemed to be left behind in just a few seconds. You're confused, not only because of your current situation, but also because of the surprise in Lemuel's voice: didn't he knock you out? Before you can ask this question, Lemuel begins taking to himself.

"Thank goodness, it's been four days," He says, "Otherwise I wouldn't have known if I got something wrong with feeding you sleeping pills and nutritional supplements all the time... You might as well check it yourself? Some water and food are under the seat, eat some apples first, then we can go down and make a fire."

Four days?!

You almost suspect that you heard wrong, but you look out the window and estimate that it may be a day or two from the town, the sickly lands aren't a familiar sight for you. You aren't wearing a priest's vestment, but a large coat wrapped in a sweater. This is the one you bought for Lemuel. It's quite warm, slightly large, and half of your palm is wrapped in the sleeve. You roll up your cuff and see several holes on your arm.

By now, it's become very obvious: Lemuel knocked you out that night and transported you into a small wreck of dubious origin. In the four days that you lost consciousness, the car went at full speed every day, taking you farther from the Holy See. When Lemuel was talking to you, he was still stepping on the gas pedal and didn't stop.

You couldn't say anything for a while, literally, you're too stunned.

You couldn't digest what happened, Lemuel told you to get out, Lemuel said he loved you, Lemuel knocked you unconscious and kidnapped you through thousands of miles away. How on earth did Lemuel get the car, the sleeping pills, the nutritional supplements and syringes? How did he hiajck you from town, escaping the Holy See's army, passing the tests of the humans, all the way to the Great Plains? Your previous blind trust is actually true, you had absolutely no idea how Lemuel accomplished this, and yet he did.

Lemuel doesn't look back, he grabs the steering wheel with a hand and turns the car radio with the other. The horn makes a loud noise, and the radio of the broken car isn't much better. Lemuel reached out and tapped it a few times, flipping the buttons, and it spat out broken words.

"...The passing of His Majesty the Pope..."

You jump up and hit the roof with a loud bang. You fall back into your seat and your coat slips off your lap.

Lemuel doesn't say anything, he found the channel and turned the volume to the maximum. The radio broadcasted reports about the impact of His Majesty's death, the words of a certain politician, how the Holy See's spokesman responded, how the believers were saddened, about the cult organization, and what the future would look like...... The most important thing of this to you is that His Majesty the Pope is dead.